


You Can’t Refuse a Man in a Waistcoat

by Bellatores



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M, Season/Series 02, romance novels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 06:37:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/936582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bellatores/pseuds/Bellatores
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Puck gives Kurt a smutty romance novel. What could possibly go wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can’t Refuse a Man in a Waistcoat

**Author's Note:**

> Set during season 2, thank you to [Matt](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thegreatandterriblematt/pseuds/thegreatandterriblematt/) for the beta, as always. Feedback appreciated!

It all started at Breadstix. It was a Friday night and they were all squished into a booth, a little too tight for comfort, which made it easy for Puck to lean sideways and fix him with a perturbing stare.

“So Hummel, I heard you and lover boy been having some problems?”

“As well intentioned as your taunting may be, Puck, Blaine and I aren’t actually dating,” said Kurt, keeping his voice carefully deadpan.

Puck took no notice and barreled on anyway, “But you want to be right? And Finn said that…”

“Whoa, stopping you there, I don’t want to know what you and Finn talk about when I’m not there,” interrupted Kurt snappily, picking up his coke and downing it.

“No need to get grouchy, he was just saying you’re not big into porn that’s all.” Kurt raised his eyebrows in surprise. He’d thought he’d heard footsteps outside his door and it would figure that Finn was as subtle as a train wreck when it came to eavesdropping.

“And you thought I could benefit from your sage advice, is that it?” Kurt’s earlier happiness at seeing everyone from McKinley had now dissipated, which left his default mode: sarcasm. Puck on the other hand had started smiling, that easy swagger smile that showed enough sexy to sink a submarine. Puck could even give Blaine a run for his money. Well, maybe not.

Leaning forward, Puck produced a small red book from his frayed khaki bag and held it under the table for Kurt to take. “I dated this girl once; it made her shudder to think about porn but she was totally into these books. She said they were romantic and shit; it might help you with gel hair.”

“One, his name is Blaine, not gel hair, two, I’m surprised you can even read and three, if this girl was so into these….novels, how come she let you have one?”

“Five finger discount, she won’t miss it, I gave her something better to think about,” Puck leered before picking up Kurt’s Prada bag and depositing the little red book inside. The rest of the evening went well; Finn got spaghetti bolognaise on his nose and spent near ten minutes blissfully unaware as to why he was the subject of so much hilarity.

In fact, Kurt didn’t even think about the book over the next week, his mind caught up with homework, the Warblers, the way Blaine closed his eyes when he sung…but that Friday, when he was waiting outside the school gates for his Dad to come pick him up and he was bored as hell, he found himself perusing the worn pages of ‘The Bachelors Outlaw’ in desperation. The picture on the cover left no doubt as to the novel’s content, a Victorian gentleman leaning against a tree in waistcoat, cravat and revealing cream pants, having his personal space invaded by a costume party highwayman, complete with cloak, parted tantalizingly to reveal his chest through his translucent white shirt.

_'It was muddy on the lonely country road. The rain hammered down relentlessly as Brandon FitzGeraldson sped towards London, urging his horse faster, focused on his destination. He didn’t see the masked figure until it was too late; the pistol was aimed at his head as rivulets of rain slid down his assailant's face, soaking through his shirt. “Your money or your life,” threatened the highwayman darkly but…'_

Kurt was interrupted by his dad pulling up to the curb and the book was shoved unceremoniously into his bag, but his mind was full of a dark haired highwayman with ridiculous eyebrows soaked from the rain. That night, before bed but after his moisturizing routine (nothing was more important than good skincare), he climbed into bed and pulled the book from where he’d concealed it.

_'The candlelit room cast shadows on Brandon’s finely sculpted torso as Nathaniel licked along it, his actions revealing a softer side to his highwayman persona, and he stopped to taste the salty sweat that collected by his throat, reveling in the feel of Brandon’s breaths gusting through his hair. Brandon whimpered and arched, wanting the dark haired man to finish it before it was too late. He’d never lost grip of his composure so completely before, never been so completely and utterly wanton. Brandon didn’t have much time to ponder his loss of decorum because Nathan had undone the stiff buttons on his trousers and was pulling them down, the feeling of the highwayman’s hand on him making him buck and moan, experiencing every exquisite feeling he’d ever deprived himself of…'_

Feeling a little dirty but very intrigued, Kurt turned off his bedside lamp and settled down to sleep. The book plagued him, it was romantic but also unashamedly cliché: the rich but repressed mansion owner seduced by the daring highwayman, with lots of badly placed sex scenes along the way. It would be a lie to say that there wasn’t a little voice in Kurt Hummel’s head telling him to resume reading despite the alarm clock reading 2:30 in mocking little red letters.

By the following Wednesday he’d all but finished ‘The Bachelors Outlaw’, voraciously scanning every word like the newest edition of Vogue. It was the customary movie night at Dalton, but Wes had brought American Pie and Kurt could only feign interest for so long, before his eyes began to slide to where his book was hidden under his calculus textbook, wishing he could throw the other Warblers out of his room and finish it already. Blaine, seated on Wes’ other side, saw Kurt’s distraction but waited until the small audience had shuffled off to their respective rooms before turning on Kurt.

“Not a fan of American Pie then?” Blaine teased, not moving from his perch on the edge of Kurt’s bed.

Kurt laughed in assent. “No, it’s not really my thing, plus Finn loves it so I’ve seen it a fair few times”. The other boy nodded in reply and when Kurt had paused to stare down at his lap (a cute nervous tic of his, Blaine had noticed) he reached over and plucked the book from under ‘Lessons in Calculus’ by Dr Philip Green.

“Blaine, what are you doing, you…” Kurt froze mid-sentence. ‘Dear ground, please swallow me whole!’ he thought desperately.

“Kurt, is this a smutty romance novel?” Blaine didn’t give him a chance to reply; he’d flicked to a random page and started to read aloud:

“Brandon was overwhelmed with the feeling of Nathaniel under him, around him, as they strove for a shared goal, but Brandon found his thrusts getting sloppier as climax approached…” Blaine’s eyes were twinkling mischievously now, his voice was an octave lower than normal and if Kurt wasn’t so traumatically embarrassed he could well say it was the hottest thing he’d ever seen/heard in his life.

“I… I haven’t got to that bit yet” Kurt lied.

“Then why do you have a bookmark at page 312?” Blaine had stepped closer to Kurt and his eyes showed no revulsion at the reading material, only amusement. Flipping to the first page, Blaine started to read, only pausing to say, “This is pretty slushy Kurt, is it actually any good?”

“What?” replied Kurt bemusedly.

“The book, I mean, the guys aren’t bad looking but highwaymen? Really?”

“You can’t refuse a man in a waistcoat?” Kurt joked feebly, watching Blaine read.

Blaine tossed the book onto the bed, got up and moved towards the door. Kurt moved to block him, protesting. “Blaine, don’t be weirded out, I can explain. God this is awkward.”

Laughing in response, Blaine dangled his room key in front of Kurt’s face. “I’m not silly; I’m just going to get one of mine so you can read that instead of this highwayman dross.”

“One… of… yours?” Kurt questioned, completely shocked at the bizarre route this conversation had taken.

“Be back in a minute, don’t go anywhere dummy.” And with that Blaine bounded out of Kurt’s room and down the hall.

When Blaine reappeared, he had his Dalton suitcase with him, complete with initials B.D Anderson in gold print on the side, and Blaine proceeded to heave it onto Kurt’s bed, spilling socks, chip packets and a rusty telescope. He rifled through the first layer of debris, still comprised mostly of socks, before Kurt could see that the very bottom of the case was covered in books.

“My secret stash,” Blaine leaned to whisper conspiratorially before plucking one from the suitcase and putting it on Kurt’s beside table. “That one’s my favorite,” explained Blaine “I mean, they blur together after a while, but this one is definitely better than some of the others.” He stopped, looking pensive, before doing up his case. Blaine picked up Puck’s gift and waggled it to divert Kurt’s attention from that place he went in his mind when it all got a bit much. “Can I read this?”

“Yeah, sure, knock yourself out,” said Kurt dazedly not quite believing that not only did Blaine have a suitcase of smutty romance novels, he clearly had quite a collection of them too.

“Just to warn you that it wasn’t my choice, I mean, umm, Puck gave me the book, because Finn must have been eavesdropping on us, and he heard that I wasn’t, you know, keen on porn,” Kurt rushed nervously. He didn’t want Blaine to think he had bad taste, after all.

“So he gave you a smutty romance novel?” Blaine laughed.

Kurt thought this was rather hypocritical, and planned on telling Blaine so. “Don’t laugh at me; I don’t have a collection of these things!”

“Shush, they totally counted as research when I first got them!” Blaine took in Kurt’s raised eyebrow and continued “When I first… err… discovered that I liked guys I did a little… background reading, as it were.”

Kurt’s curiosity overrode his reflex to put his fingers in his ears. “Do tell.”

“Well, I tried the internet but the information was very… err… _mechanical_ , and I saw the book in the Barnes and Noble holiday sale and I thought to myself, why not?” Blaine had his earnest face on and Kurt could not bring himself to laugh at it. Besides, the image of younger Blaine buying Harlequin romances was too cute to snub.

“You’re not into porn either then?” Kurt ventured, only just getting the word past his lips.

“No, I… I like porn too” Blaine confessed, “It’s just not too good for the romantics.” Blaine’s tone was jovial but his eyes were serious and Kurt prayed that Blaine wasn’t trying to give him another ‘talk’.

“Well, I think I’m gonna go to bed, perhaps read a bit first?” Kurt patted the book, hoping Blaine would get the hint. There was only so long he could talk about this, with Blaine, before it got awkward.

Blaine didn’t mention the book over the next few days and Kurt assumed he didn’t want to push the issue further, which left Kurt plenty of time of mull the whole thing over and over in his head. Embarrassingly, when he started to think about it, he found it very hard to not get distracted, which resulted in him almost completely fluffing the lyrics to ‘Volare/On an Evening in Roma’, a mistake which prompted Blaine to ask him if he needed to see the nurse.

Which was how Blaine ended up knocking on Kurt’s door late on a Tuesday evening, sitting down cautiously on Kurt’s perfectly made bed and asking, in that perfectly concerned way, “Is everything alright, Kurt?”

“Yes, I’m fine!” Kurt lied, trying to think of a plausible excuse for his behavior that didn’t make him sound weird. “I’ve just… had a lot of homework lately.”

It was then that Blaine spotted his book on Kurt’s dresser and went to pick it up with a mischievous grin. “You finished this yet?”

“No, actually, I got to page seven and gave up.”

“Kurt, you have got to stop studying so hard, you’re gonna work yourself to death!” Blaine took a breath to continue his lecture but was cut off.

Kurt looked at him. “No, it’s not that, I just… lost interest I guess?”

Making a soft ‘oh’ sound, Blaine’s expression morphed into something more serious.

“They’re not very realistic that’s all, I thought they were in the beginning, because anything has to be more realistic than…those movies but… they’re like a fairytale…” Kurt trailed off, knowing that with one more sentence he’d be spouting a hundred bad clichés.

“And life’s not like that?” continued Blaine, eyes fixed on him.

“Exactly. I’m not saying people don’t get the expensive car, the dream house and the perfect guy, but if he bought you flowers every day, wouldn’t it get boring?”

Blaine paused “Because people have flaws, right?”

Kurt smiled at Blaine, knowing he’d understand completely, and all the things that had been circulating endlessly in his mind fell on top of him. He knew tears were coming but he took a shaky breath and tried not to lose it in front of the other boy. Blaine noticed (of course he noticed), rejoining him on the bed still holding the book.

“I don’t expect my first kiss to be perfect” murmured Kurt softly, not looking at Blaine, “But is it so bad to want what the characters in those books have? I know they’re unrealistic…” Kurt knew he was babbling by now but his brain was not filtering the torrent of words currently exiting his mouth. “I don’t even want the ridiculously mushy sex, I just want one little…”

He stopped at the first press of Blaine’s lips to his, chaste, soft, hesitant. Was Blaine expecting him to push away? Was he mad? Kurt leant into the kiss and it was so good, Blaine’s hand on his hip, but before he knew it, it was over and Blaine was pulling away.

“You deserve so much, Kurt, the flowers, and the romantic dinners. You shouldn’t settle because you are worth so much more than that.” Kurt’s heart swelled, made buoyant by the happiness and the ‘oh finally’ feeling he got from turning and pressing his face into Blaine’s neck and smiling against it.

Kurt decided he’d better say something, give Blaine a chance to back out. “So…that answers that question then?”

“Indeed,” returned Blaine with one of those smiles, leaning down to kiss the top of Kurt’s nose and whoa, had Blaine’s eyelashes always been that long?

“Wanna watch ‘Shall We Dance’?” Blaine suggested.

“Sounds perfect.” And Kurt drew him in for a long kiss before going to get the DVD.


End file.
